FALL RIVER — It doesn’t matter how old you are. An ambulance ride can still be scary.

Harley Cipollini realized this last January. The Kuss Middle School eighth-grader was being transported to Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence. She was having difficulty breathing because she had a blood clot in her right lung, the result of a rare medical condition. Even though she was headed toward one of the best hospitals in the area, she couldn’t help but feel nervous.

“I was still scared, going to the hospital not knowing what was wrong,” Cipollini said.

The sterile aesthetics inside an ambulance don’t help. The vehicles are equipped with all of the tubes, IVs and machines meant to keep a patient alive and stable — oxygen tanks, monitors, defibrillators — but it does not carry the types of things that would comfort a kid at a time when they might need the most comforting.

Cipollini said she thought about that during her ride to the hospital and after she recovered from her illness. She wasn’t necessarily afraid for herself, but she thought about children younger than her.

She began to think of all the emergency vehicles — ambulances, police cruisers, fire trucks — that often transport kids. They could be equipped with blankets, small stuffed animals, coloring books and water bottles.

“I thought it was a great idea,” said Harley’s mother, Debbie Cipollini. “What happens when the cops and ambulance show up to a fire or a domestic situation? These kids are scared and crying. The cops don’t have anything.”

Harley, rather than pitch the idea to other folks, took matters into her own hands, her mother said. “She said, ‘Nope, I want to do it on my own.’”

Harley used the $800 she saved up for a car she plans to buy when she gets her license in a few years, and, instead, went to Walmart.

“We went to several Walmarts,” Debbie Cipollini said. “She bought all the totes Walmart had. At another, bought fleece blankets, and so on.”

They went to the Dollar Store to buy coloring books and crayons.

The “comfy kits” include diapers, baby bottles and formula for the youngest children, as well.

“I wasn’t sure how to do it. So I just thought of stuff police don’t have. Whatever the kid needs,” Harley explained. “The blanket makes you feel secure.” There are 72 in all, enough to put one in each police cruiser.

It’s caught on with police and city officials. Both Mayor Will Flanagan’s and police Chief Daniel Racine’s vehicles are now equipped with comfy kits.

“The chief got his own,” said Marybeth Buglio, school resource officer at Kuss. “We’re working right now to have them delivered to the station.”

Harley recently received a citation from Flanagan, who called the eighth-grader’s actions “selfless” and inspiring.”

“She should be very proud of herself for taking the time to think of others in their time of need. As mayor, I could not be more proud of Harley and know her comfy kits will be put to good use soothing the sick,” Flanagan said.

Racine echoed Flanagan’s sentiment: “We thank Harley for her efforts and know these kits will indeed bring comfort to sick and injured children. She is a wonderful kid, her family should be very proud of her.”

Harley has also set up a Facebook page, www.facebook.com/pages/Harleyscomfykitscom/1411928855721731, in case other people want to contribute to her effort.

And some people already have.

“The chief offered to help her with that,” Debbie Cipollini said. “A few close friends have offered to help ... I think she deserves it. She’s a great kid, an honor roll student.”

Even though she has made 72 kits and they will soon be in police cruisers here in Fall River, Harley would like to see them in more vehicles. “I want to branch it out to other stations,” she said.